His eyes narrowed as he looked at me, trying to gauge the truth in my words.
“What are you talking about?” He growled out the words in a voice much deeper than his normal unpleasant baritone.
“Something I’m not prepared to talk about in front of your people. It could start a panic. Plus, I wouldn’t want to scare them.”
The two goons took a half-step forward, but Truth pulled them back.
Truth himself snorted a laugh, but I could see by his eyes that I was close to catching his full intention.
“If you won’t talk, then you don’t pass, simple as that.”
“If I don’t pass, your people could all die. Simple as that,” I said, taking a step forward.
A grumble rumbled around his group, and they started to spread out as if they were going to surround us.
“And how will you do that, Jevyn?” Truth obviously didn’t respond well to threats as evidenced by him letting go of his two cohorts and casting suspicious looks around the Darkwaters, as if somehow, I’d secreted an army somewhere who were going to leap out and slaughter his people where they stood.
“I won’t, Truth.” I waited for the knowing grin to appear on his face. “But she might.” I nodded toward where Katie was standing.
“Huh,” she said, sounding surprised.
“Exactly,” Truth said. “How is a young slip of a girl like her going to kill my people? She could barely lift a sword.”
“I’ll explain to you.” He looked suspiciously at me. “But this needs to be a grown-up conversation between the two of us.” Katie coughed, and I cast her a quick look of apology. “Sorry, three of us, with none of your hangers-on.”
“What if you decide to attack me?”
“Truth.” I raised an eyebrow. “Look at us. We don’t physically match up to you in any way, even together. Attacking you would be suicidal, and I’m not ready to die yet. But if you are, then we’ll just . . .” I left the rest of the sentence unsaid.
I grabbed Katie’s arm, spun her around, and then walked away. We hadn’t gone three steps before Truth yelled at us to stop.
I stopped, still holding Katie’s arm, and turned back to Truth, giving Katie a quick wink on the way around that changed her bemused face to utter confusion.
Truth waved us back and then strode away down one of the darkest of dark alleys that even he crinkled his nose at as we stepped a few feet into it.
“Go,” he yelled at his bodyguards who had followed us unthinkingly. “Right, Jevyn. No audience. Talk fast, you have one minute. If I’m convinced, I’ll let you walk away.
Physically, there was no way I could fight him off, so with a silent prayer, I started talking.
“You have heard about the rifts that have been happening in the veil?”
“Yes. What of them?”
“So far, most have been harmless.” I pictured the bloody scene at the rift through to Earth where I met Katie. “Most. Some have been disastrous. People are being sucked through to other worlds.”
“And why should that worry me?”
“Because others, from Katie’s world, are finding their way through too.”
Truth shrugged. “Thirty seconds.”
I glanced at Katie for a moment and then turned to Truth. “There are people on Katie’s world who are infected with a disease. A contagion. Dragon blood helps them but doesn’t cure them. They are coming over here to get dragon blood and maybe even kidnap dragons, but while they are here, the bigger danger is that they will infect others. Our people. Then, there are people from our world going to Katie’s, risking catching the infection and bringing it back here. We have to stop the rifts opening to Earth and stop people coming from one dimension to the other, or sooner or later the infection will take hold and we will have huge swathes of the population dead. We will probably both end up dead too. I need you to help me. First to find Katie’s friends so we can get them back, and secondly to find out who is causing the rifts from our end. I am deadly serious about this. I know you would love to see my family ruined, and I don’t blame you, but would you really want to sacrifice yourself and your own people for that?”
“Does Lalnu know about this?” His face had gone pale, and he seemed to have diminished in front of my eyes.
“Yes, she sent me to speak with you. She needs your help.”
“And your father?” His face twisted slightly as he talked about the king.
“No. He is away. He knows nothing about this.”
“What about you, Katie?”
“Yes, I knew,” she said, looking like she wasn’t quite sure what the question was about.
“I meant, are you contagious?”
“No, no. I have the contagion, but I’m just a carrier. Like Nova. Derek and Lynnette don’t have it at all, but we need to find them. Please, listen to Jevyn, set aside your differences and work together to save your people.”
Truth stood back up tall at Katie’s statement.
Then he looked at me, his face full of darkness, but I couldn’t tell if it was anger or fear he was portraying.
“What will this contagion do to the people of Dracos?” I noticed they were no longer his or my people.
“We don’t know for sure, but on Earth the contagion has caused havoc. All I do know is that everyone on Dracos is in danger. We have no defense against this.” I could see Katie nodding to my side.
He stared at me again.
“Follow me,” he said, turning toward the mouth of the alley. Katie and I followed him back up to where the stands and sellers were most numerous and ended up in front of a shop with a peculiar collection of eclectic crap that seemed to be spilling out of the doorway into the inside.
“Stay here. I’ll leave a couple of men to guard you, and I’ll be back. But listen, Jevyn. I don’t care one little bit about you and your family. I won’t allow ordinary people to be put in jeopardy though, so I will go find your friends, and you can get out of here. Then, I’ll put out some feelers with the people I know to see if I can find out who is opening these rifts. Wait here.” Then, he was gone, sinking into the gathering crowd, and heading off deeper into the Darkwaters, to places I didn’t know about or have any desire to find out about.
“He doesn’t like your family, does he?” Katie asked.
“He has good enough cause not to.”
“Tell me more. We’re likely to be here for a while.”
Katie turned her beautiful eyes at me, full of interest and . . . maybe something else. Something deeper? Yes, suddenly I was sure there was something in the way she looked at me that hadn’t been there before. My heart made a little bump in my chest. For a moment, all I could do was stop and stare back at her.
Chapter Eighteen
Katie
The Darkwaters, Dracos
“ARE WE JUST going to stand around here waiting?” I asked. It was what we’d done for the last fifteen minutes, so I wasn’t expecting any great change. “Oh, and who is this guy, Famil?”
“Yes, to the first part. There’s no point upsetting Truth any more than he is already. And Famil is a she, not a he. She is a scientist. I’ve been friends with her since we were children.”
I felt a funny pang in the center of my chest when he said Famil was a woman.
“Friends?” I couldn’t help it, honestly. As soon as he said it, I felt a pang of something which some might suggest could be jealousy. I wasn’t sure, or at least that was what I tried to convince myself. I’m not sure I did a great job, in all honesty. I tried to smile and ask in a friendly kind of way, but I wasn’t convinced I did a great job on that either.
“Yes. Friends. You have those on Earth too, don’t you? Aren’t you friends with the young men in your group? It’s a term you understand?”
“Yes, Jevyn. That is a term I’m familiar with,” I said in a trying -to-be-calm voice. Patience was not always one of my virtues.
“You are friends with Nova. I’m friends with Famil.” He had a point, but if he was more
than friends with Famil or had been, I hope he didn’t think the same applied to me and Nova. I mean, I loved Nova as a friend, but anything else . . . eww. I couldn’t think of him that way.
I decided to silence my stupid jealous streak and give up that line of questioning as probably more harmful than helpful.
“So, where do we find this Famil friend of yours then?” Oh, well, I tried.
“We find her in another city on Dracos, called Eastborne. It will take about an hour to fly there.”
“Well, it might take you an hour, dragon man, but what about the rest of us mere mortals?” I said, wondering if he’d just forgotten that we humans couldn’t fly or if he was just being willfully dim.
“I won’t fly. We will use a flyer, of course.” He looked at me like I was about to rip him to shreds and leave him on the sidewalk.
“A flyer?”
“Yes, a flyer.”
“What’s a flyer?” I asked, squinting at him like he was about to tell me something I didn’t believe.
“A machine. For flying.”
“Like an airplane?”
“Sort of . . . but not quite.”
“Right.” I dragged out the word. I wasn’t looking forward to either the explanation or the flight. I hated flying. “When you say ‘not quite,’ what exactly do you mean?”
“It’s difficult to explain in terms you might understand.”
“What? Because,” I put on a sickly-sweet voice, “I’m just a simple Earthly girl who wouldn’t understand complicated things like flying?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You, patronizing me with all that terms-you-might-understand crap.” I liked to say what I thought, but I might have said too much because Jevyn’s face was a blank.
“I’m sorry—”
“So you should be.” I resisted the urge to pout, cross my arms, and turn my back on him. Too childish.
“Okay, the flyer is called a . . .” Then he said something in some language I didn’t know that had a lot of harsh consonant sounds and some unrounded vowels that ended in crkchked, or at least that was what it sounded like. I felt like a complete fool.
“You meant you were going to translate it into English, don’t you?” I said, feeling heat rising up my neck and into my cheeks.
“Well, I was going to try to, but if you’re happy with the Morean Dragon language, then I’ll stick to that.” He reeled off about a minute of stuff that I couldn’t understand a single word of.
“What did you say?” I asked, assuming he was running through some technical aspects of his flying machine.
“I said that I’m not sure why you’re so angry with me but that you look pretty when you blush.” He looked down at the ground, although I could see the corners of his mouth turning up and a few giveaway laugh lines at the sides of his eyes.
I didn’t know what to say, so I blushed some more, which might be a good or a bad thing. I wasn’t sure which right then.
In the end, I had to say something rather than standing there, mouth open like some bumbling half-wit with a very red face. “Thank you,” I said.
“For being confused or for complimenting you?”
“For the compliment. I don’t know why I’m angry with you either,” I lied. “I guess I’m a bit on edge over my friends.” I hoped he would accept that as a good reason for me acting like a jealous jerk. “Listen, tell me about your flyer. I promise . . . mouth shut from now on.”
He was just about to start speaking when I had a voice calling from farther down the marketplace.
“Oooeee, Katie.” It was Lynnette.
I waited until they got a bit closer and then waved at them. Truth and a couple more of his trained gorillas walked behind them, looking mean and decidedly unfriendly. Lynnette and Derek were walking side by side, looking around themselves as they approached. Nova was in front, striding toward us.
“Where have you all been?” I asked. “You’ve been gone for ages, and we’ve been stuck here waiting for ages.”
Lynnette looked extremely bright-eyed. “We’ve just been doing a little shopping.”
I raised an eyebrow at that, but I didn’t get a chance to ask her what that actually meant because old Truthy arrived then, looking altogether displeased with his lot in life. Standing behind them, he glared at Derek’s and Lynnette’s heads and then shook his.
“You . . . people are a complete menace. I’m telling you now that should I ever see you or anyone else from your planet here, my reaction will be much less pleasant than it was today.” Lynnette stood in front of him, mimicking him silently with a huge grin on her face. “You are no longer welcome in the Darkwaters”—he took in a breath—“ever again.” He bellowed, “Do you understand?”
Lynnette nodded while still making faces and grinning at us. Derek had flinched slightly when Truth yelled, but he was also nodding his head.
Nova was shaking his head, but I thought that might have been more to do with what Lynnette had been up to than anything else.
“Jevyn, you are responsible for getting these creatures out of here,” Truth said.
Jevyn nodded. “Happy to oblige, and bear in mind that these aren’t the problem ones.” Even Truth had to force back a smile at that one. Jevyn held out a hand to Truth. Truth held his hand out, and they clasped each other’s forearms in a kind of handshake. “I hereby grant you the honor of my favor.”
I could see Truth grip tighter onto Jevyn’s arm, the blood rushing away from Jevyn’s own hand that was slowly turning white under Truth’s hold.
“I accept your favor, given under honor. Be in no doubt though, Jevyn. I will collect my debt. I need no more reminder of the level of honor your family deem to be fit.”
“You have my word, Truth. Let that be enough for now. I’ll be happy to prove that not all members of my family are loose with their honor.”
Truth glared for a moment. Then, reluctantly it seemed, he let go of Jevyn’s arm, and the two men separated again.
Jevyn turned to the rest of us and indicated that we should leave, so we did. I stayed at the back next to Jevyn, who bravely waited until he was out of sight of Truth before he started rubbing and shaking his arm in an attempt to restore the circulation.
“That man has a grip of iron,” he said once the blood had begun to flow back into his arm and hand.
“It looked like it. I’m glad he didn’t start on me like that. So, what was all that favor and honor stuff?” I asked innocently.
“Remember, I told you we don’t have money, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s how we work without money.”
“He did you a favor, so now you have to owe him one.”
“Exactly, but that could be anything from goods to livestock right up to doing him a favor like he did for me.”
“Right,” I said, trying to get my head around the complexity of such an arrangement. But it was interesting all the same. “How is it recorded though? Who keeps a tally of who owes what favors to who?”
“It is on your honor.” Jevyn had his eyebrows bunched up in confusion. “What other method would work? If a person breaks his honor, other people will not deal with him, and he and his family would suffer. It is the only system we know here. It’s what binds our society together and means that people behave honorably.”
Katie thought back to what life was like back home and came to an instant conclusion that what Jevyn had described sounded a whole lot better than constantly grubbing around for money and then being relieved of your hard-earned wealth by grasping politicians whose only concern was how to stay in power.
“What about the shops and stalls back at the market? Nobody can make a living on favors alone surely?”
“Very astute, Katie. No, there are no favors in the market. Things are acquired by bartering for them. I want eggs; therefore, I’ll provide you with some vegetables. Simple and effective. Favors are for larger, more personal debts owed to someone, but believe me, if
you default on your honor debts, no one will barter easily with you, and you will end up destitute because of your reputation.”
“What happens to those people? Is there like a welfare system?”
“No. If there was a welfare system, people would feel free to act dishonorably. If someone does get into trouble, they can make reparations to the person they have dishonored and start all over again. Otherwise, some people give excess goods to charities who support the destitute, but it is no more than subsistence at best.”
“That’s sounds like a harsh system to me,” I said. “What happens if someone is ill or disabled?”
“They are looked after by their families, of course.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“What about healthcare and education.”
“That is funded by the current royal family.”
“Wow. So, you guys have to pay if someone gets sick?”
“We do. It is part of the pledge of honor every new king or queen makes when they assume the role.”
“What happens if they don’t?”
“Then they wouldn’t last long as king and queen,” Jevyn said, as we kept walking along the street. “Maybe you can see why I really don’t want any disease coming here now?”
Suddenly, Jevyn’s fear of the infection started to make a lot more sense.
Nova yelled from up front, asking where we were supposed to be heading.
“Keep going the way we’re moving now. It’s about another half mile.”
Ten minutes later, after a period of quiet introspection in which everyone seemed to fall into without prompting, we reached the edges of the city where open countryside and larger houses were interspersed with what looked like large industrial areas.
Jevyn put on a spurt of speed to get to the front of our little group and started to direct us. I took a quick look at the others. Derek and Lynnette were both carrying bags that clinked as they walked. Derek’s face showed little in the way of emotion while Lynnette’s seemed to vary between a grin she couldn’t seem to shift and then cautious awareness of her surroundings, looking around suspiciously before the grin reasserted its dominance on her features.
Chasing Legends Page 12
